We really loved Kathleen Dean Moore and Scott Slovic’s recent blog post for Orion, “7 Ways to Write to the Future.”

It’s a call for writers to step into the urgency of the moment, by creating work that both addresses and is worthy of the gravity of global warming. The call to action echoes our own sentiments about the pollinator crisis.

They write:

“..there is essential work to be done also in our roles as academics and writers, empowered by creative imagination, moral clarity, and the strength of true witness. Write as if your reader were dying, Annie Dillard advised. “What would you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?” …Surely in a world dangerously slipping away, we need courageously and honestly to ask again the questions every author asks: Who is my audience—now, today, in this world? What is my purpose?“

Moore and Slovic lay out seven possible forms this kind of writing might take, and make space for many more interpretations.

We’re energized by this brief, powerful editorial and excited to see how writers respond, in the pages of Orion and elsewhere. Write to the future. Use your artistic gifts to tell this generation and the next why pollinators matter.

photo: Meg Newell